Tools Up | PS4 Review.

Publisher: All in Games!

Developer: The Knights of Unity

PS4 Review

*Disclaimer: I was sent the code for this game in return for a review, all opinions are mine and mine alone. 

I'm a little late to this game but I have been seeing a buzz about it for a month now, I first heard about it through my Twitter friends and thought it looked adorable and fun, the game I'm talking about focuses on renovating homes it a comical and very cute way. As a kid, I was hooked on makeover and renovation shows such as 60-minute makeover which most of the time ended up in people's houses looking like someone puked skittles everywhere and DIY SOS which is still going and I still watch as it's one of the most rewarding shows out there. Tools Up however has a different take on renovations and how they're done which can either leave you frustrated or laughing your head off at how bad you can be painting a wall without making a huge mess and slipping over.

The idea behind it is simplistic, you can work as a team or on your own to get on with the task at hand in a certain amount of time or without the timer on. I admittedly tried both and I like practicing with the time off and then playing with the time on, in order to do this you will have to make 2 different saves which makes sense. Being able to turn the timer off is a big help for people with slow reaction times like myself, you can practice as much as you want with it off or just play the game that way and the game doesn't punish you for it, in fact, it still allows you to get trophies either way. It's the perfect game to play as a family and learn the best way to work as a team, even the little ones can give it a go.

Once I learned how the buttons work, which somehow took me 10 minutes to figure out even though I read how to use them over and over again so I kept restarting the game until I was clear on what to do which was clear from the start anyway! I was just having a brain fart at that point, I went up to the blueprints straight away looked at what the rooms needed and turned the map around whilst the blueprints were equipt, I think they did this to make it harder and make you waste time going back to the blueprints to turn it to the right angle you want, this is a big help for any walls or flooring you may miss when painting or laying flooring.

The first few levels are very easiest and focus on the minimum amount of tasks to get you into the swing of things, the choice of characters is probably my favourite part about the game because they look so funny and you just know it's going to be hilarious watching these funny characters slipping over spilled paint and rubbish which I did more than I ever thought possible in this game, doing this slows you down a lot so your best bet is to clean up any mess asap when you come across it, although with so little space it can be hard to get by and you may end up getting frustrated trying to pick up the mess and slipping instead.

As I said before reaction time is important the faster you move and get stuff done the better chances you have at succeeding, whilst trying to apply the products inside the house you have other builders appearing with more supplies for the house which you need to get before they walk off and once they turn around you have to wait until they come back again to try again then find the space to put the next lot of supplies so it's not in your way otherwise your character will stop and shake their head slowing down your pace and making it harder to finish the game in time, this annoyed me a bit because I would forget about it every single time.

I spent most of the game removing what was on the walls and floors than actually decorating, the decorating side took a lot quicker (except when laying tiles), because of this I would make a lot of mistakes and end up filling up a bucket that had wallpaper paste in it took me about 5 levels to realise that if I accidentally picked up paint on a brush I could put it back in the paint bucket instead of dumping it in the bin outside which saved me so much more time. I did, however, try to make the most of one bucket that is used for wallpaper paste, rubbish, plaster etc but I kicked it over so many times spilling the contents on the floor making me slip, I'm surprised I could get through a level.

I found the controls tedious at times, I would keep restarting the level again to try and learn from my mistakes and what was slowing me down, on top of this playing with more than one player will often make your reactions even slower as you have to maneuver your way around the houses you're fixing up in order to get the job done, it will either send you into a rage or make you laugh at the top of your lungs. The game certainly pushes you to want to succeed even if it means trying over and over again, I personally was more frustrated than finding it funny it's probably because I get really serious when it comes to these kinds of things.

Being rewarded with new characters helps a lot as well as collecting trophies, I like that you can play both campaign and party with more than one player or play campaign mode on your own when you do play on your own get as much practice in as you can before playing with others that way you have the advantage that they don't. If you're looking for a game to annoy and excite your family and friends at the same time I definitely recommend Tools Up, it has a lot of character and is bound to push you to get a better time score!